A World of Naturalists

Joseph Kastner

From the book: “They had other affairs to attend to -- politics, medicine, farming, teaching or tending store -- but as if driven by some enchantment they went throughout the unmapped country filling bags with seeds, boxes with birds and bottles with carefully killed insects. These they sent across the Atlantic to delighted -- and demanding -- naturalists who always wanted more and more. Distance, disasters, even war could not stop the traffic....

“Friendships grew up across the ocean between men who had never met and who knew each other only through the letters they wrote and the specimens they exchanged.... There is no really straightforward way of telling about the advance of natural history in America.”

No really straightforward way to tell the story, Kastner says, but his writing and research combine to make the naturalists who crisscrossed America come vibrantly alive.

“The naturalists kept coming upon each other again and again, in person or in their work, as they moved through the land and through the decades, overlapping, adding and subtracting, clearing up and confusing....”

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and John Murray Publishers, Ltd.

The bookmark pictured below lists some of the people you will encounter in these pages. Feel free to print a copy and keep it tucked in the book as you read.... (click for PDF)

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